Well. I'll keep going....

   There is next to no chance I will make my goal this November.  I'm not surprised.  November is a lousy month for me to try and set goals.  I get so stupid.  I have no idea how the 3 Day contest is a thing I can do, but to do less than half again as many words over 10 times the number of days continues to defeat me.
 
   It's served its purpose, anyhow.  I've been trying to keep super busy, and I'm certainly doing that.

   I was head down yesterday for six hours, and I wrote scarcely 1000 words.  I've been editing the book as I go, and that has turned out to be MUCH more time consuming than I thought.

  I don't mean to blow my own horn here, but my plotting, at least for the first two-thirds of the 3 Day book has turned out to be a lot tighter than I thought.  it's not easy to wedge new scenes in. 

  This has been a weird book for me.  During the 3-Day, one of the characters did something unexpected that caused me to pitch the whole outline.  This weekend I'd just gotten to the place I intended to add about 10,000 words of new material   I did add one scene, and as a result of what happened in that one scene, My protagonist felt too guilty to keep playing undercover, and decided to fuck off back to Los Angeles almost as quickly as he did originally.

 I'm now a bit unsure how I'll expand this book to a useful length, though I know some of the rushed shit is coming up, and I can expand that.  I don't think I'll be adding 50,000 word to the total anymore.  I just hope I can get it to a publishable length.

In addition to revising the 3 Day, I've been writing a comic novella based on the presidency of David Hasselhoff.  I don't know why, but it writes itself, and I think it's strong.

So I'm gonna keep writing, but I'm under no delusions that I'll finish my 50k.

There's no shame in it.  I should have known better than to revise rather than just do something new.

The truth is, though, I've got no shortage of first drafts that need polishing right now.  It's probably for the best I work on some of those for a while.

And the rest of you?

Day 10

   Well.  This isn't going at all well.

Day 7

Okay, so I wrote a whole new scene.  The first of two that are coming on in short order.  That went quickly, and well.

Now I have some revision of existing material to wrestle with.  I'm going to try and keep at it for an hour or so longer.

Tomorrow is game night so I expect I'll be going into the long weekend with a deficit of about 3000 words.

I am confident I can catch up.  A lot of what's to come now is new scenes rather than revision, and those go quickly.

One thing is that I've discovered I am actually adding more words to the overall manuscript than I thought I had.  As I go, I expand things, but I've also cut pieces of the manuscript, and I was worried I was cutting enough that I was impeding progress.

The 3 day version of the book was 30,942 words. I've added 8, 226 words to the overall length of the manuscript.  That's better than I'd hoped.  Another excision is coming up pretty quick though.

I expect that I will, if I stay on pace, turn it into a real full length book, though.  here's hoping.

Day 6

   Mood of the day:  frustrated.

    This is infuriating.  I am finally at the place in the book where I will be writing essentially new material.  It has taken me SO long to get here, and I've moved at a snail's pace.  I'm pissed off at myself for not working the first three days.

   I'm still confident that I'll catch up this weekend, now that I'm in the new material stage.

   Here's hoping.  Right now I'm just frustrated and pissed off at how hard this expansion shit is.

   I'd have been better off with a new story.. but in the long run, I know this was best.

Day 5

Okay, so, I'm nearly at the part of the novel that broke me during the 3 Day Novel Contest.  I'm not looking forward to "living" through it again.

It's been a very unsatisfying day of work.  I've been making minor changes and expansions to the existing text, rather than doing any major new pieces.  The changes are, I think, for the better, and I'm not BORED exactly, but my brain is whining at me.  "I wrote this book already, give me a new toy," it keeps saying.

I just need to be patient.  I'm two longish chapters away from writing a whole huge piece of the novel that plain didn't exist before.  It's a section I'm looking forward to.  I think it will make Will's anger feel a little more earned.

I'm still behind schedule, but I think I can catch up on the long weekend coming up.

Even with my slight lag in word count, I'm still doing better on NaNoWriMo than I ever have.  That's not saying much, of course.

Late evening

  My challenge right now is figuring out a fair word count.  I am now past new material, and to the place where I'm expanding and revising existing stuff.

Because I've written a new beginning, a lot of expository stuff could be removed from the chapter I'm working on, and that's mad it a little tricky.  As I go on, I'll simply be able to compare the old version of a chapter to the new version, and see how many words I've added, and that'll be close to fair as an idea of my new word count.

That doesn't work here, because I had to cut SO much stuff from this chapter that it would still wind up being a net loss even with the stuff I added.  So, I've been pasting new sections into a document to count the words.  All I can do to be fair.

I think I'm probably at a point now where I've got a net increase in words for the full manuscript, even after cutting the entire first chapter wholesale.  After I've worked my way through the rest of this chapter, I'll do a compile and see how it's going on that front.

By the end of this week, I expect I'll be at a place with this book where I'll be doing about 10-15,000 words of brand new material in a row, at minimum.

Expanding a novel is a lot harder than cutting it back.  I knew this to be true going in, of course.

I don't even know HOW I verify my word count with nanowrimo.org.  But I guess, even if I don't I will know what I'm doing.

Okay.  I'm gonna do one more piece here.  Theoretically, I could get caught up completely if I did another 1558 words before bed.  I think, instead, I'll spread that out over a couple of nights.

It's been a fruitful day, though.  Absolutely.

   Addendum from about a half an hour later:  I did the compile after going through the rest of this chapter and not wanting to change much of anything.  I have discovered that I wrote 5109 words today, with a net gain to my manuscript of 3704 words.

I can sleep on that okay.

ceNoWriMo

Since I did some media interviews about how awesome NaNoWriMo is, I figured I should probably give it another whirl. So I'm whirling. A little. Please send liquor.

Taking a break now

  I've done 3,827 words this afternoon, and I'm getting a bit hungry.  I'm thinking I'll have some supper, and maybe watch a move or something before I get back to it.  I'd love to do another 1500 or so today, but I have some thinking to do now about my next steps.  It might be better for me to let it sit for awhile.

  I think it's a far stronger beginning now.  I worry that it lacks the urgency of the 3-day, though.

  The thing about the 3-Day novel, see, is that it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but it IS a page turner.

  I'd like to keep that page turner feeling.  It's easy to achieve during the three day, because you have NO choice but a breakneck pace.

  I'd like to think Will comes off rather as rather more likeable in this draft so far.  I guess I'll see.

  If there are any non Canadians out there, do you know who Bruno Gerussi is?

  I think the first line of the book is great if you do, and maybe doesn't work if you don't.

Finally working

I'm using new writing software these days.  It's called Scrivener, and you should look it up.  It's a really interesting approach for a word processor.  It's designed for project compilation.  Once you've finished a draft, you export to Word or whatever you use for the final gussy up.

It's ideal for a project like mine.  I can keep all the old chapters attached to the project, in multiple revisions, and add and insert the new ones.  Each chapter or section is kept as kind of it's own document until you choose to compile it. 

I've just finished extensively re-writing my opening, based on the last attempt I had to get this going.

Now I'm going to lay new ground with a much expanded version of the second chapter from the 3-day manuscript.

It's going to be a weird process of expanding existing material to flesh it out, and adding entirely new chapters, so tracking my word count is going to be an interesting proposition.  I guess, though, that the whole point of this exercise is to just be productive, and I reckon I'll be doing that.

I've had zero desire to work this last few days, and too many shiny distractions.

Now it's time to buckle down and catch up.

If I write 1,772 words a day from here on out, I'm golden.

That's attainable.

How are the rest of you doing?

Busy weekend ahead

   I skived off for the evening, having had a more than moderately stressful work day today, and as I have to get up and go in for a training session tomorrow.

   I lounged on a couch and dozed with three dogs.

   Honestly, I have no complaints.

   Sunday, I'll make a push to catch up.  I have faith in my ability to do so.

  More later

Happy Fun Times!

When I consider the 2500 words that I have written so far, I am filled with rage and self-loathing.  I hate my solo fiction writing.  In collaborative writing, I know the established setting: I can see it in my mind, and I know that whoever I’m writing with can see it too.  I know who my audience is.  Most of all, I can feed off of their passion, and their ideas.

Writing alone feels a lot like eating alone, except that I don’t have to do it to live, and it isn’t delicious.

I do not intend to reread any of what I have written until I finish my first draft or give up on this project entirely.  I don’t need the discouragement.

Which brings me to something else I’m not enjoying about this process: it feels like being back in school.  Not the blowing off class to get drunk in the Uni bar and yell at my compatriots about matters of import part, or the passionate class discussions part, or the bouncing ideas off of enthusiastic professors part.  No, it feels like the part of school where you’re enslaved by it, where your every waking moment is consumed with the guilt of not working, where your time belongs to a project and not to you.

Interestingly, however, as much as I’m despising this process, I know that I’m going to be drawn back to it.  Last night, I kept being reminded of how much I disliked what I was writing and, yet, by the time a couple of hours had gone by it became increasingly difficult to put my laptop down.  I kept wanting to write just a few more sentences, finish the paragraph, finish the scene.  I’m not sure where this addiction to trash production comes from, but I guess I’d better use it while it’s there.

Update: At least I can post on this blog in red font and it looks AWESOME.

Rilla!

   Rilla has joined us here, and will, one hopes, post on her progress as the month goes on.

   I'm hoping to seduce yet more people to this dingy corner of the web.

Catching up

   I decided to have fun with friends yesterday, so I'll be catching up later today on the actual work of writing.  I get to write a new opening to my book.  This pleases me, as the current one is weak and stupid.

   It also means, probably no net GAIN in words for the first two days, but new words that DO count for the event purposes, so that's good.

   Sacha has a different challenge.  He's starting from scratch, and hopefully he'll let us know how it's going for him.

Greetings people.

   I'm planning on expanding my 3-Day Novel Simon Says Sorry to a full novel length of around 85,000 to 90,000 words.  I figured I'd try to do it as part of the NaNoWriMo event, because any excuse to be productive is a good one.

  This year, my friend Sacha is also on board with an entirely new manuscript.  I've invited him to post his thoughts as the process goes forward. 

  So, feel free to stop by and check in on us as the month goes on.

  I'll start actually discussing the process tomorrow.

Draft 2.5

   Got some excellent last minute feedback from Ms Jordan Gray, and made some changes for the better.  I'm really really really, more than just a little bit tired, and I work at 7:30...so I'm submitting it as is, and then I am going to lie on the flat rectangle and sleep.

   Good night.

Oh yeah

   I think the title is "Simon Says Sorry".

   Of course, that might be the sort of idea a person comes up when they're on, like three kinds of cold medication and 6000 calories of junk food.

   I'm actually looking forward to going back on my diet tomorrow.

   I guess my habits really have changed, because eating like this has not made me feel anything but full, and bad.

Done.

   I have just finished the revision.  Unless I receive some feedback that makes me feel differently, or someone catches a typo, I am done.

  It has all the 3 Day pacing problems, but I'm philosophically happy with the book, if that makes sense (It doesn't.  I know it doesn't.  Take mercy on me.)

  Thank you for support, both vocal and silent.

 After crapping out last year, finishing this year means everything to me.  This book could be a total piece of crap, and I'd still walk away feeling okay about it.

 Right now, I'm going to have a snack, and watch something dumb and decompress.

 I'll keep my eyes open for feedback, and make sure I have this thing formatted right for the contest so I can submit it around midnight.

 If anything else comes up, I'll let you know.

 Otherwise, that's it for another year.

Chapter 4

  I am revised up to Chapter 4.  That is where the book began to take on life, right after the whole, "Oh my godz, I must QUITZORR the c0ntest panic" of Saturday.

From that point on, the problems are, I'm sure, many but small.

It remains to be seen if I have improved the start of the book, but I suspect it's, at least, better than it was if not actually good.

Less lame is what I'm after. 

Harm reduction.

Gayleen tells me that it's solid once I fix the beginning, but she is my friend, and therefore nice to me.  Although she has, now that I think of it, probably told me when things sucked.  So I'll take it.

Yeah.  I'll take it.

My cold is much better now, as my stress has reduced.  I am super grateful to have this revision time.

The book is probably my shortest 3-Day, but from a plot standpoint, it's by far the tamest and the tightest.

And, as I say, it's a Scooby Doo story.

He'd have gotten away with it, too if it wasn't for you meddling mutes!

Finished Mark I

    I just now finished my first draft.  I am very very glad to have about six hours or so to revise.

    I think the book has a strong ending.  I may be wrong.

   The beginning needs some fixing and filling out.

   I could expand this book to 70 or 80 thousand words in the fullness of time, but I think it would end up being a little slack.

   I don't know.  I never know.  As with every 3 Day Novel ever written, the ending may be a bit rushed.

   If you are out there and can spare what will probably be less than an hour, I'd like some people to read it and tell me what they think needs fixing.

  I'm going to take half an hour, and rest my hands and mind, and then I'm going to get started on Draft 2.

Almost there

   I have three and a half scenes to write and then I am done draft one.  Then I need to back and fix the opening, and kind of zip through it for coherence.  I am reckoning it at about 31-32,000 words, probably.

  It is with mounting horror that I realize that my entire book is a depressing Scooby-Doo episode.

Stretch break

   It's time to put on real clothes and go get myself a walk for ten minutes.

   Progress continues apace.

I'm awake! I'm awake!

    My computer is acting six kinds of weird.  In a minute, I'm going to reboot it and go make myself some manner of breakfast.

    I feel and, I presume, look like a five gallon pail of horse manure.

    This is all I have to report at the moment.

Bed time

  I had wanted to hit 25 or 26 thousand words before bed, but my energy is flagging, and I can tell Im not going to get better, only worse.  I'll aim for an early start tomorrow and stay on target.  I just got to a convenient break point, anyhow.

  I'm in the home stretch now.  All that remains is for Will to lose his grip on reality, and go halfway insane.

And then kill someone.

So. that's not too bad is it.

See you in the am.

Ladies and Gentlemen

   If nothing gets you hotter than an obese man who is slathered in Vick's vapo-rub and writing in his pyjamas, then I am your sex symbol.

Heavily medicated.

   I am now ahead of schedule.  I am leaking, still, and my eyes are blurry, and my legs ache.  Gayleen and Dashiell, our poodle, have rendered me succour in the form of a box of Kleenex with lotion, which is helping to keep my nose attached, and a bewildering variety of lozenges, inhalers and vapourisers.

  I love my Gayleen.

  I am going to keep pushing on tonight for several more hours, I think.

  My plot keeps surprising me, by the way.  Considering I swore I'd never do this without an outline again, it's going quite well from a story persepctive, I think. 

 Normally, these things start strong, and get weaker as the weekend goes on and the writer starts to rush, and to get tired.  I think this book is actually becoming more focused.

  My usual writing style is multiple narrators and story threads that combine to form a larger narrative.  I actually don't know the last time I stayed this long in a particular character's head, or followed such a linear progression of plot.

  It's weird, and its different for me.

  Also, I tend to have a supernatural element in most of what I write, and there's one in this book, but it's questionable.  It might be genuinely supernatural, or someone might just be a liar, or a flake. 

  The ending of this book is ultimately the opposite of what my usual take would be, and I'm curious to see how it comes off.

  I'm taking a break now for forty-five minutes to walk around and rest my hands.

  Despite the cold, I am feeling like this might turn out, provided I get some time to revise tomorrow, to be my strongest 3 day novel.  Not the most fun, to be sure, or the most wildly creative, but the strongest as a novel.

  Cold fall apart on me yet, though. 

  Aand it's time for my Han Solo clip in iTunes, saying "Great, kid.  Don't get cocky."

  Also for another shower.  This time with no fish tank in the tub. 

Ok, for real now...

Does anyone know of a cold remedy that doesn't make one drowsy?  Sleep is a luxury I just can't afford right now.  My goal is another six thousand words before bed if that can be done.  I want some wiggle room to revise tomorrow.

FML

    I am still working hard, but I absolutely have a cold now.  I am leaking from the eyes and nose, and can barely breathe.  I hate getting sick during the contest, but I refuse to let it stop me this year.

    Anyone have a cure that they've been keeping a secret.  Please hit me up with it now.

Afternoon update

    After the sudden shocking departure from my outline last night, I went to bed early, and had troubled dreams.

    I wrote a few words this morning, and then went for a brunch with Gayleen to talk about the story.  She seems to think it's going well, and I'll have to take her word for it, because I have no idea.  I've been really weepy and emotional all morning, which is, of course, going to really help me in cementing my reputation as the manly-man Ernest Hemingway of my generation.

  What happened in my story shook me about as much as it did Will, I think, and that's the why.

  So, I've had a bit of a late start, and I expect to be pulling an all nighter tonight to catch up, especially because, with the ending now being so radically different, the opening chapters need to be completely re-written as well.  I will need part of the day tomorrow, without question, to revise.

  If there's anybody out there who is interested in reading what I've got so far, let me know.  I'd love another set of eyes and 90 percent of my peeps are at the nerd convention this weekend being nerdy nerdy nerds.

 Back to it.

Um....okay

   So, one of the characters in my book just did something that surprised me so completely that I am breathless.  My outline is done.  It's garbage.  My whole book just changed, and, I think, for the better.  I am not written into a corner here at all.

  To the contrary, the story now makes an entirely different kind of sense to me now.

  I know what needs to come next, but I think I need some time to digest it.

  I'm back on schedule, more or less.  I expect there to be a lot less staring at the page and screaming tomorrow, so I think I'm in a good place.

  I know it's a cliche for writers to say that the characters do all the work, and make their own decisions.  At moments like this, I really have to agree though.  This story just took a ninety degree turn, and I'm getting to have that weird experience that I sometimes get to have where I discover the story the way a reader would.

Yay!

Time for Supper

Well, I'm not going to lie to you, that was a close one.  I spent about a solid two hours staring at my novel, realizing that, despite my outline I was getting nowhere.

Dennis Dunlop was just not showing up for work.  I don't understand how that works.  Sometimes the people you're writing about just call in sick or something.

I announced to Gayleen, in fact, that I was quitting, giving up, failing for my second year in a row.

Thankfully, she was able to, simply by being calm, de-escalate me.

I'm still not sure I'm writing a book anyone will want to read, but Dennis showed up, and now that he's here, things are going back on course.  I'm a little behind, but I believe I will catch up now.  I think the worst of the head pounding is over.

To my surprise, by the way, I think that, instead of being annoyed with Dennis Dunlop, Will is getting very quickly attached to him.  That's remarkable, especially as he tends to dislike most men a great deal.  That's very interesting, especially as it will have an impact on the climax of the book.

So, in short, I think I'll finish this time.  I think.

And thank god for having a roommate around to talk me down.

I am starving.

That is ridiculous as I am undoing the last two weeks of dieting this weekend, I'm sure.

I'll get back on track Tuesday.  Right now I need to run on heavy fuel.

More later.

Afternoon break

   I am running slightly behind schedule.  The work is not going really well.  I know where I need to get, but I am having some issues getting there, despite my outline.

   I'm not sure what I'm writing is any good, and that's not good.  To push through this, you need to be in love with what you're doing.

   I am just trying to remember that his happens.  In an hour I might be fine.

   In any case, I need to move around a little.

Day 1

   Just woke up, did my ablutions and had breakfast.  I'm still waking up, but I expect to be back to work very soon.  Dreams complicate everything when you're writing.

Going to bed.

    I just finished the Prologue and half the first chapter.  Things are coming out the way I'd hoped they would so far.  Of course, I'm strung out and wired right now.  In the morning I might feel differently.  An hour and forty minutes has produced about 2200 words. 

   Beginnings are usually the easiest part on the 3-Day, because you rehearse them in your head.  Not so much this time.  The tone is a little different than I planned.   That's not a bad thing.

  As I say, I like there to be some surprises.

  It's a good start and a convenient end point.  My dog is about three feet behind me, fast asleep and adorable.  I've learned the importance of sleep for this contest, and I'll crawl in there beside him for about 8 hours.

  See you in the morning.

T-19 minutes

    Just returned from my evening walk, bringing me up to my 10,000 step a day goal.

    I am now listening to Prince Hal's Dirge by Loudon Wainwright, and trying to psych myself up for the opening scenes.  It's a good song for that.

   I would like this twenty minutes to go away now please.

T-2 hours, more or less

   I have, in the last two hours, gone for a walk, consumed more calories than anyone should, especially on the diet I'm on, and had a revelation that changes the nature of my book and makes a goodly portion of my outline kind of useless.  So, that happened.

  It is just shy of two hours until the writing begins.  I've tidied up my writing area, and I'm about to compile some music playlists to play as I work.  I'm one of those people who needs music to work efficiently.  Too much silence, and I get distracted by every little noise that does pop up.  The music also acts to put me in a kind of altered focus.  it's like a trance state, so I pick the tunes pretty carefully.

  Music is kind of important to this book, also.  One of the main characters is a musician.

  This time right now?  The time a couple of hours before the work starts?  This is the crazy time for me.  Will I write the book I worked on the outline for?  Is that the book I want to do?  Am I able to write it?  Should I throw away my outline and wing it?

      (the answers are yes, yes, I hope so, and no, you asshole, stay on target)

 I am full of nervous energy.  And cheese.  Oh god, so much cheese.  Nervous eating, my old enemy, has taken me hard.  Once I get to actual writing, I'll be okay.

  To occupy myself, I'll talk a little about the book I'm planning to write, and how it came to be.

  Last year I started a book, and then got really ill, and had to bail.  In the long run, that was probably a blessing.  With hindsight I can see I had some good ideas, and one great character, and the plot was bad.  it was just bad.

  So this year, I'm taking the one good character, and a much simpler story, and running with it.

  The character is Will Sturgis.  He's a thirty-something guy with dark brown hair.  He's not bad looking, but he's not ravingly handsome.  He is nobody you'd look at twice.   He's very bright, though not a genius.  He's angry, he's got a ton opinions.  He doesn't speak.

  He can't speak.  He's completely mute.  He knows sign language, but more or less refuses to use it.  He communicates, when he has to, by using a pad and a pencil.  Quick words, and little sketches to communicate.  He feels it expresses him better than the sign language.  He also has a thing about using the sign language because he feels it marks him as "disabled". 

  Will has a lot of opinions that are very controversial about disability, and I'm more than a little worried that people will take his opinions as my opinions.  They aren't.

  Will makes his living as a professional eavesdropper.  Sometimes he uses this for anonymous blackmail through a website he maintains.  Other times, he just wants to know things.  On rare occasions, he is hired to do it by one of a small group of clients who know who he is and what he does.

  He accomplishes this by seeming to be deaf.  By appearing to be disabled and, to all intents and purposes becoming invisible.

 So, he's the quiet one.

 In this book he's hired to look into the mental well-being of a popular rap musician DubbleD.  DubbleD's manager is convinced someone in his entourage is gaslighting him.  Will is supposed to find out what is going on, and who's responsible.

  DubbleD is actually a kid named Dennis Dunlop.  He's in his early twenties, comes form a dirt poor trailer park home.  He's had family trouble, is going through a custody battle, and is having a hard time dealing with not just being suddenly famous but being a white trailer park kid in a traditionally black musical genre.  Resemblances to actual persons here are largely coincidental.  Honest.

  Dennis cannot stop talking.  He's a pathological talker, a fountain of expressed thoughts.  I think his reaction to Will, once Will becomes more than scenery to him, is going to be a need to fill the silence.

  So he's the talker.

  I think, obviously, there's a premise here that can work.

 The plot is, of course, slightly supernatural, but less outre than is typical for me.  It's tempting to call it a buddy comedy, but I'm still not sure that the two of them are going to like each other much.  They have some very serious commonalities of abuse and bad parenting in their backgrounds, and this commonality is what drives each of them.  Their approaches to life, though, are pretty much diametrically opposed.

  I like going into the story expecting some surprises.

  I'm still grappling with the title.  Titles are hard.

  One more thing, and then it's time for another little walk.

  I think part of the problem with my book last year was that I felt I had to really explain the premise of Will's life and career.  I'm not really going to go into it much in this story.  It begins, as most mystery type stories do, with the client meeting, but I'm treating this like the third or fourth book in a series.  I'm assuming that the audience knows the deal, and by making that assumption, I think they will actually pick it up quickly.

  I've picked up countless mystery series somewhere in the middle, and picked up quick.  It's probably better that way.

  And that's a half an hour killed. 

  More walking.

It begins again

Once again, I am doing the 3-Day Novel Contest over the Labour Day Weekend. For those of you not familiar with the contest, starting at midnight tonight, and finishing Monday at midnight, I, and about umpteen thousand other people will be trying to write a short novel of approximately 100-130 pages (about 30,000 words). We then submit these novels, in whatever condition they're in, and whatever condition we are in to be judged.

There are prizes, but you don't do it for the prizes. You do it because you enjoy pain. It's the literary equivalent of a marathon, and it is a rush. Big highs, big lows. When it is going well you feel like a tiny god. When it is going poorly, you consider your failure as absolute, swear never to do this contest, or any other form of writing, ever again.

 I use this blog to update folks on my progress, track my word count, and chat with people to keep my morale up as I go.

 My novel this year is tenatively called, "The Eavesdropper". I don't care for the name, and I'm sure a better one will come.

Feel free to keep checking back. I'm happy to answer questions, and if you want to see what I've written so far, I'm always looking for honest in progress feedback.

I'll be updating later tonight as I countdown to midnight, and talk a little bit about the book and the characters and that sort of thing.